1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to detection of a corner in a space, and, more particularly, to a method of stably detecting a corner in a remote area, and an apparatus to perform the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, much attention has been drawn to mobile robots that operate in indoor environments due to the need for health, security, home networks, and entertainment. Human-robot interaction (HRI) is essential to these mobile robots. Robots include devices such as microphones, vision systems, ultrasonic sensors, infrared sensors, and laser sensors, and recognize humans and their surroundings using those devices. In particular, the mobile robots can more effectively move by detecting obstacles, such as walls and/or corners, and avoiding crashing into the obstacles based on detected obstacle information during movement in a space.
Corner points that exist in a space are used to compensate for the location of a moving robot in a mobile robot location estimation technique, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), or to calculate the location of a user in a user tracking system.
Conventionally, there has been disclosed a distance sensing device using a structured light distance sensing system. The structured light distance sensing system can easily measure a short distance, but its measurement resolution decreases as a distance increases, resulting in performance degradation. Therefore, it is not easy to detect a corner in a remote area using only the structured light distance sensing system.
Also, there has been disclosed a conventional technique for sensing a distance using both a laser sensor and a general camera. Although a corner can be more stably detected using information obtained from the laser sensor and the general camera, an expensive laser sensor is required, and the technique thus involves a high cost.